


Prism

by lilacSkye



Series: Some Believe in Fairy Stories [3]
Category: RWBY
Genre: Angst, But Just For A Little Bit, Character Development, Developing Relationship, F/F, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Internalized racism, Missing Scene, Pre-Slash, Pre-Volume 3 (RWBY), Ruby has such a crush on Weiss it's not even funny, Team Bonding, because we all know Weiss is so much better than that, let me know if I missed something important to tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2019-05-31 21:27:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15128159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilacSkye/pseuds/lilacSkye
Summary: Weiss and Ruby have a talk on the night Blake reveals her secret and runs away. Weiss is less okay than she'd like to believe. Ruby, as the good friend and partner she is, is dead set to make her see the light and push her back on the right track to become a better person.Set during Volume 1, between chapter 15 "The Stray" and chapter 16 "Black and White".





	Prism

**Author's Note:**

> before you jump at my throat, I'm NOT condoning or justifying Weiss's abysmal, atrocious behavior towards Sun and her opinion of the faunus in general. She was being a real prick - and this coming from a person who loves Weiss to bits - and Blake's reaction is fully justified. While I do believe the one who is really at fault is Jacques, Weiss needed a wake up call there. Also, the fact that she has such a drastic, mature and quick change of heart leads me to believe she wasn't being racist for racism's sake, rather than for some sort of association "White Fang - Jacques being pissed and taking it out on Weiss."
> 
> As I said, this doesn't condone racism. Racism is for losers, it sucks massively. Just to make it clear.
> 
> This is simply my take on what might have happened in the "twelve hours" Weiss claims she had to think this situation over and that led to her fully accepting Blake as her teammate and friend. Might add a second chapter in a few days. I hope you enjoy!!

Ruby Rose wakes up suddenly with a start, with the clear, foreboding feeling something is missing.

The dorm room she wakes up to is quiet, almost eerily so. It’s three in the morning, according to Weiss’s alarm clock, and only Yang’s heavy, regular breathing breaks the silence looming heavily onto the room.

Ruby thinks it’ll be a long time before she’s able to fully remove Yang’s muffled sniffles and sobs out of her mind. Her eyes are instinctively drawn to the empty bunk bed above Yang’s, and her stomach lurches uncomfortably as she hurries to avert her gaze. For the umpteenth time that night, Ruby wonders if Blake is alright, wherever she has ran off to. She can’t help wonder whether Ruby should have poured more effort in talking to Blake, to reassure her. She is the team leader, after all.

She’s not doing a great job at it, is she?

Still, the room is too silent, even with Blake missing. The window is open, a chilly breeze fluttering in from outside, enticing and alluring. There is a full moon outside tonight, cruelly beautiful as its pale rays dance on the polished floor and walls, mockingly. For some reason, the sight only manages to twist Ruby’s inside even further, her panic raising quickly.

She remembers closing the window herself before she went to bed. She was the last to turn in for the night, with Weiss being the first one to come back to the dorm and Yang following soon after, utterly wiped out from looking for Blake.

Her heart spikes up as her brain races to put the pieces together. She hesitantly leans over the edge of her bunk bed and peers down at Weiss, just to make sure everything’s alright.

Except Weiss is not there.

Ruby feels her blood freeze solid, fear gripping her chest tight, so tight it hurts. It’s late in the night, curfew is up and Weiss Schnee would rather die than be caught breaking the rules by wandering about the school by night.

For a split second, she thinks to wake up Yang, but she soon reconsiders it. Yang has already enough on her plate with Blake going missing on them, and she’s utterly exhausted. Besides, Ruby is the team leader _and_ Weiss’s partner. If there is anyone who should take up on this job, it should be her.

But more than everything else, Ruby is Weiss’s _friend_. If Weiss is so troubled to go as far as slip away from the dorm room when everybody else is asleep, Ruby wants to be there, to help her out.

Weiss looks like the type who internalizes a lot of feelings, keeping them down and bottled in until she can’t hold them anymore, and she finally explodes, more often than not through some cutting, even cruel remark, precise and deadly like the rapier she uses as her weapon of choice. Cold and sharp like a glass shard, like a frozen crystal.

But she fails to realize, she’s also cutting herself in the process, isolating herself more and more from the rest of the world.

Ruby doesn’t want that. She has seen how good of a person Weiss can be when she’s not pressured into being something she is not, when she doesn’t have to keep up a perfect mask for the world. Even Weiss, if given a chance, can be warm, just like she was as she taught Ruby Dust Chemistry with a passion that made her eyes sparkle with pure excitement, or as she tried out ice cream for the first time. Ruby wants that loosened up, comfortable Weiss back, wants to show her for the world to see.

But first, Weiss needs to be brought to reason. As her BFF, it’s an onerous duty that falls on Ruby’s shoulders and hers alone.

Suddenly filled with determination, Ruby slips out of bed and lands on the floor as quietly as she can - like a cat, she’d say under different circumstances - and puts on her boots over her pyjama pants, not giving a damn about fashion when there’s a heiress to rescue from herself at stake. She silently pads across the room, paying close attention to Yang’s regular, deep breathing and occasional snorts. She almost freezes when Yang inhales deeply, just as Ruby’s about to prop herself over the windowsill and leap over it, but then Yang simply turns around, her bushy golden hair hiding her sleeping face from Ruby’s sight, and Ruby takes that as her cue: as swiftly as she possibly can while being silent, she heaves herself up and jumps.

She lands with a three pointer on the grassy carpet underneath, her knees buckling and wobbling ever so slightly at the impact. But that doesn’t matter now, because suddenly there is a surprised squawk somewhere very close to Ruby, and something thin and cold and cutting is suddenly thrust right at her throat the next second. Ruby immediately raises her hands in surrender.

“Relax, Weiss, it’s me! I’m unarmed!”

“ _Ruby!_ ” Weiss exclaims as quietly as she can, though it’s clear she wishes for nothing more than to scream every insult she can think off at Ruby. Nevertheless, she pulls Myrtenaster away from Ruby’s throat. “You, you absolute _dolt_. What in the world are you even doing here?”

Ruby grins, though it dies on her lips as quickly as it comes: Weiss is wearing her knee-length silvery nightgown, her unblemished arms and legs exposed in all their glory for all to see, and her hair is down, the long, snow-white strands dancing on her bare shoulders down till way past her back. It shines like a liquid star under the bright moonlight, and for a second Ruby is mesmerized. That is, until she notices Weiss’s eyes.

They’re red-rimmed, and puffy. The glistening trails of hastily wiped tears could still be seen staining her pale cheeks.

Weiss has been crying. And if Ruby has to make a wild guess, she’s been at it for quite some time.

Ruby can’t tell why, exactly, but the sight makes her mad, a lot more than she’d care to admit. Weiss crying… it’s just wrong. Unnatural.

“I…” she finally stammers when she realizes she has yet to answer Weiss’s question, and Weiss doesn’t seem to be in the most accommodating mood right now. “I woke up and I didn’t find you so I kinda got worried… I saw the open window and thought you were somewhere in the courtyard, maybe, and well, I was right, wasn’t I?”

Weiss arches an eyebrow at Ruby’s rambling, but says nothing. She just crosses her arms, Myrtenaster jutting out ominously from under her right arm, and sighs tiredly.

“Ruby, I appreciate your concern and I am grateful for it, but please go back to sleep, I’m fine.”

Ruby pouts, because that’s a big, fat lie if Ruby ever saw one. Everytime she resorts to those big words of hers, Weiss is not feeling fine as she’d like Ruby to believe. She shakes her head and grabs Weiss’s arm. Weiss gasps at the sudden touch, caught off guard.

“You’re lying.” Ruby says confidently, “You’re not fine at all.”

She can feel the goosebumps scattered all over the heiress skin under her touch. She’d like to believe they’re due to Weiss being moved by Ruby’s passionate words, but even Ruby is not yet naive enough to actually buy that. It’s probably just the cold.

Still, though, Weiss does look impressed. She gingerly pulls away, her eyes losing the cold edge as they fall back to the ground, growing wide and glassy with fear and pain and uncertainty Ruby is all too familiar with. Her heart squeezes uncomfortably as Weiss tries desperately to hold herself together, her shoulders hunched protectively, her head ducked down and her hair falling in front of her eyes in a long, silver curtain to shield her from prying eyes. Myrtenaster slips through her slackened fingers and drops onto the grass with a soft thud, and Weiss soon follows suit, her knees folding underneath her under the weight of the truth she’s finally been revealed.

“I… don’t know what to think anymore.” Weiss finally says, broken and defeated. The words hurt like knives as they slip through her mouth, and she tries to hold them back, but before she can do anything about it they’re already out, laid out for Ruby to see. Ruby drops to the ground as well, her legs criss crossed. She’s wearing her combat boots over her pyjama pants, the dolt, and it’s an absolute offense for the eyes, but Weiss is so shaken that she can’t even muster up the energy to point that out.

“You mean about Blake?”

Weiss nods curtly, though there is hardly any need to. What else can get Weiss Schnee so upset if not the revelation her teammate has always been a faunus, and, even worse, a White Fang member?

Weiss remembers feeling outraged, and rightfully so, as soon as she fully realized the implied confession Blake accidentally let slip out. She’s a victim of the White Fang, she has all rights to hate them. She has always been told the White Fang is little more than a bunch of murderous degenerates that just enjoy watch the world burn.

So then why, _why_ does Weiss feel a deep sadness every time she recalls Blake’s angry eyes, and the absolute terror bleeding through those amber irises as soon as she realized what she was confessing to?

_Why_ did Weiss, for the briefest second, want to reach out to the faunus, to hold her back before she ran, instead of challenging her to a duel, a Schnee against a White Fang agent, in revenge for all the people working at the SDC whose lives the White Fang had brutally stolen?

To say Weiss is confused is probably the biggest understatement of the century. There is a storm raging on within her, and she’s lost right in the middle of it.

“You like Blake, don’t you?” Ruby says softly, reaching out for Weiss again, who doesn’t do anything to stop her. She takes a sharp breath, as though the words have scalded her with the inescapable truth they present to her, raw and simple just like Ruby, who has no idea of how politics and society work, but always manages to spot the real root of the problem in front of her.

Ruby waits, patient. Weiss can see the moon reflected in her silver eyes, highlighting them even further. They’re almost white.

“She lied to us,” Weiss tries to reason, forcibly pulling herself out of whatever reverie she fell into. “And ran. The innocent never run, Ruby.”

Ruby’s face falls, her eyebrows scrunching up in sadness. “That is true. But have you thought there might be more than meets the eye?”

Weiss is silent. The cracks in the mirror reflecting her perfect, cold world are growing wider and deeper. She can almost see the monsters lurking just behind it.

She has always thought the White Fang were the bloodied monsters reflected in the mirror.

What if that bloodied, white-clad figure is none other than her own reflection?

A warm hand finds its way to her own, wrapping it in its soothing warmth.

“Deny it as you might, I know you care a lot about Blake. Regardless if she’s a faunus or not, you like Blake as a friend.” Ruby says with a timid smile that easily outshines the moon. “And that’s all that matters. Is it not?”

As always, Ruby doesn’t get it. She’s too simple-minded, and barely older than a kid, of course she can’t possibly know what Weiss is going through as all her certainties shatter, one by one, leaving her alone and naked and scared of the world.

“You really are a country bumpkin, aren’t you?” Weiss chuckles quietly, holding Ruby’s hand tight in her own. Ruby shrugs, utterly unbothered by the veiled insult.

“It’s just you thinking too much, Weiss,” she pokes Weiss in the ribs with a finger, causing Weiss to yelp. Weiss glares at her half-heartedly. “I really don’t get this whole Schnee vs White Fang thingy at all. I just want my friends to be okay. I think that if you like a person for _who_ they are, _what_ they are really doesn’t matter. What do you think?”

It’s naive, Weiss thinks bitterly. The world doesn’t work like that. The world, the real world, cares about the name you carry, the heritage weighing down on your shoulders. It discriminates and hates and tears people apart. There is no space for feelings in such an unforgiving reality.

And yet, even though Weiss probably knows this better than everyone else, she just can’t help but get lost in those warm, silver eyes that are set on a world so much better than the one they are living now, a world where differences can be set aside for good. She finds herself speechless. She too wants to look at that world Ruby is seeing.

The glass is shattering, the jagged shards falling on the floor with a crisp clattering noise. Dozens and dozens of little Weisses look up at Weiss from within the pieces.

Ruby speaks up again, probably worried by Weiss’s prolonged silence. “You like Blake for the person she is. If you’ll give her a chance to explain herself, I’m sure you can sort this thing out. The world is not only black and white, there are so many colors in between, and some of them are so pretty!!”

“Like red, right?” Weiss says before she can think otherwise. Ruby chuckles unabashedly.

“Yeah! Red is awesome! It’s the color of roses, it’s simply the prettiest!”

“Hmm, I’m more of a blue person, but I suppose I get what you mean. By the way, you are aware roses come in several colors, such as white, pink, yellow…”

“Yeah,” Ruby leans back against the brick wall behind her, looking up right at the shattering moon. The shards look like white roses petals, now that Ruby thinks about it. “but red roses are still the best.”

Weiss smiles at that, a strange soft look in her eyes. Ruby has to physically restrain herself from openly ogling at Weiss, and from pumping her fist up in victory. “Hm, quite true.”

Silence falls once again upon them, broken only by the cawing of some crow on the nearest tree, cawing that for some reason sounds like Uncle Qrow’s half-drunken laughter, and the chilly breeze combing through the courtyard. More than once Ruby has to dodge Weiss’s vast expense of hair whipping about, and she is sure she has swallowed a few silvery strands.

“Thank you,” Weiss finally says, standing up rather abruptly. “I… needed that. Now I think I know what I have to do.”

Ruby is a little surprised, but she quickly catches herself and rises to her feet as well, though she lacks Weiss’s impossible grace and elegance. “No problem. Glad I was of help! I mean, what are friends for, right?”

There’s a brief pause in which Weiss levels a very weird look on Ruby, as though trying to see through a mask or something. Then she relaxes, and Ruby is rewarded with the prettiest, most genuine smile that ever graced Weiss Schnee’s lips.

“You’re right.” Weiss comments as she picks up Myrtenaster and points it at the wall. Immediately, a path of snow-white, shining glyphs appears out of nowhere on the wall, leading up all the way to their dorm room’s window. Oh, sneaky, clever Weiss.“Shall we?”

Ruby grins and flashes Weiss a victory sign as she follows Weiss up and steps on the first glyph. The world tilts again, and it’s so weird to be walking upwards, right towards the sky. Last time Ruby was in this situation, the adrenaline of the fight was quite distracting. Now, strolling up with Weiss’s hair falling into her face again, it’s weird and yet exhilarating.

“I doubt I’ll ever get used to this trick of yours,” she finally says as she climbs back into the room, her head spinning from the sudden changes of gravity. Weiss scoffs haughtily, already having carefully placed Myrtenaster back in its case and now busy fussing with her bunk bed.

“You didn’t have a problem with it the first time.” she comments evenly as Ruby clambers up on her own bed and leans down, so that she’s standing upside down, her face just a few inches from Weiss’s, who rolls her eyes - it looks like she’s glancing downwards to Ruby, it’s so weird - but also smiles.

“Yeah, but last time we had a plan.”

“Which you never disclosed to me until I saw you shoot up towards me on Crescent Rose.”

Ruby grimaces. It’s true, she really needs to work on her communication skills. Yang has already hammered this argument in Ruby’s head enough as it is.

“Yeah, well, in the end there was hardly any need for words, wasn’t it? You got it at once! Team White Rose for the win!”

She makes to pump her fist in the air, but when she feels herself stagger dangerously in the haphazardous position she’s in, she reins in the impulse. She tries to play it off like it was something she intended to do, but Weiss glances up at her with a knowing grin and Ruby knows she’s perfectly aware of what is going on in Ruby’s mind.

“Go to sleep already before you get hurt, you dolt. Tomorrow we have a big day ahead of us.”

Ruby beams, a toothy upside-down grin that Weiss finds absolutely ridiculous and incredibly endearing. “You mean you’re going to help us track Blake down? Like, _actually_ helping, rather than providing sarcastic commentary from the back seat?”

Weiss nods curtly, her mouth curling in displeasure at the blatant insult Ruby hurtled at her, as she slips under the covers. “That’s right. And I _was_ looking, even though I’ll admit I have been rather unpleasant to deal with yesterday.”

“You can say that again.” Ruby stage-whispers, earning a rather ferocious glare from the beautiful Ice Queen. She just laughs at it, she’s already grown immune to it, and even Weiss knows it.

“Regardless, I’ll aid you in your search. I… need to have a talk with Blake.”

“Are you going to apologize for being such a jerk?”

Weiss startles and scowls, a lovely, reddish blush blooming like roses on her pale cheeks. “Well…”

“Weeeisss…”

“Okay, fine, I get it, I will apologize for being a… a…”

“A jerk.”

Weiss bristles, ruffled by Ruby’s brutal honesty, but then her shoulders sag in defeat. There is really no other way to define it.

“Yes, I’ll apologize for acting like a jerk. Happy now?”

Ruby smiles broadly, even though she’s starting to feel all her blood rushing down to her head and it’s starting to become really uncomfortable. But she can’t help it, not when Weiss is making so much progress to become a better person, and so quickly.

“Yay! I’m gonna stick by your side so that you won’t back down at the last minute! Do you want me to bring pom-poms? Or a banner?”

The horrified face Weiss makes at the prospect of Ruby showing up with the whole cheerleader gear to encourage her is probably the most hilarious sight Ruby has ever been blessed to see. She bursts out laughing, and nearly slips down the bed.

“Oh, now you’re being ridiculous,” Weiss hisses, pointedly turning her back on Ruby. “Goodnight.”

“Geez, it was a joke, Weiss.” Ruby is still cackling near hysterically, but she eventually manages to calm down and catch her breath again. Her eyes are tearing up and her face feels like it’s on fire, though she can’t tell whether that’s due to the laughing fit or the fact she’s been hanging upside-down for several minutes. Her head is starting to feel a little light and dazed.

Still, before she heaves herself up and goes to sleep for good, there is one thing she feels she has to say.

“I’m always going to have your back, Weiss, no matter how hard you try to isolate yourself. I believe in you.”

No response, of course, not that Ruby actually expected one to begin with. Still, she can hear the lightest hitch in Weiss’s too perfectly regular breath. It’s already enough of an answer for her.

With a broad smile, she finally straightens up and lies down, suddenly excited and impatient for the new day - and the new, improved Weiss - to come around.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Please let me know what you think about it, feedback really helps me improve as a writer!!


End file.
